"I don't have a religion; I study the Bible and have a personal relationship with God."

I'm realizing that it's not the fact that there are a bunch of denominations of religions out there who believe crazy stuff that's scary--it's the fact that each individual religious person is talking to a different version of his/her invisible friend who they "truly know and feel" is communicating with him/her for real.

I'm inclined to disagree, simply because disunited insane people are less of a threat than united insane people. Also, viewing things individually rather than through a traditional, societal or otherwise collective scope is a first step (albeit still pretty far away) towards thinking for yourself.

I don't know, remember the guy who assassinated Dr Tiller, the "Christian" doctor who performed abortions, during mass, in the church, was known to not belong to any particular church or religion, but had become godfearing and thus started reading the bible a few years before he committed the assassination.

It's those freaks operating on their own who will commit this type of crime, fanatics who don't belong...

Yes, he was freaky loner, but there are organizations that support the murdering of doctors and publish their addresses. Dr. Tiller was castigated by Bill O'Reilly on national TV, and O'Reilly claimed that Tiller was aborting babies that were only half an hour from birth. Put the nutcase in contact with the demagogue and you're likely to get violence out of it.

I care somewhat, because I feel that religion is a self-delusion, and I would prefer to see those I care about be free of delusion and able to see and reason clearly. However, ultimately every person must make their own decisions, and just because I don't agree with that decision does not mean that I won't continue to love them anyway.

So I think it's possible to disagree on religion and still love one another. But to do so would require putting the love for your partner ahead of any desire for religious proselytizing - which I believe a fair number of people are unable to do.

By "compartmentalize" I mean simply to accept one's own faith as "true" while realizing its founding text--and therefore its particular set of laws--does not consist of facts. You can believe a faith or philosophy without forcing everyone else to conform to it. Sacred texts are works of fiction and, like fiction, they do contain some "truth"--"story truth," as Tim O'Brien calls it. There is truth to be found in a good novel, though the story and characters be only inventions. Roger Williams, the founder of the Rhode Island colony, was able to remain a devout Puritan while living and working among people of other faiths. As a Puritan, he was sure all non-Puritans were going to hell, but he did not take it upon himself to send them there, figuring God would take care of it. As a literature teacher, I explain a lot of different religions to students, though I don't believe in any of them, just as I read fairy tales to my daughters when they were young without believing in fairies. I am an atheist, and everyone who knows me is aware of it, but I don't preach atheism while teaching, say, Paradise Lost or the Ramayana. I wish my colleagues would do the same, perhaps by not insisting on a prayer at the beginning of every meeting. (And they wonder why I come in late all the time.) I do think religious belief is generally stupid, but it's usually only one aspect of a person's character. The dangerous believers are those who only have one compartment, and it's full of gods.